(by Private Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will make a statement on the tragic air crash yesterday in Wolverhampton, which involved the deaths of three persons.

A De Havilland Dove, G-AVHV, crashed into a house in the Wobaston estate, Wolverhampton, at 10.05 B.S.T. yesterday and burst into flames. The aircraft had been making a flight from Luton to Wolverhampton. At present, I have no evidence that, prior to the crash, this flight was in any way unusual.

Both occupants of the aircraft and one occupant of the house were killed. Two other people in the house escaped with minor injuries.

The Board of Trade's Chief Inspector of Accidents decided to carry out a formal investigation. A team of accident investigators left immediately for Wolverhampton and are now at work. A report will be published in due course.

I am sure that the House will wish to join with me in expressing sympathy with the relatives and friends of all those who died, and also with the injured.

I join with my right hon. Friend in offering sympathy to the family of my constituent who lost her life, and I am glad that the two members of her family who were there were mercifully spared.

I should also like to offer my sympathy to the families of the two members of the crew who died in the accident.

May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he can give an assurance to the other families living on this rather congested local authority housing estate that this was an unusual accident which is not likely to recur with this particular kind of plane which uses the airfield a good deal?

Will my right hon. Friend also tell us when he expects his report to be published, and if it will be made public?

I should also like to thank my right hon. Friend for the prompt action which he and his Department took, first, in letting me know about the accident yesterday, and, secondly, for sending his inspectors to the scene of the accident so promptly.

I appreciate what my hon. Friend has said about the usual promptness with which my officials acted in this tragic matter.

I can give the assurance, on the basis of statistics that we have, that accidents of this kind are a most unusual happening. The determination of the causes of this particular accident will depend on the investigation now in hand.

The timing of the publication of the report is a matter for my right hon. Friend and I to decide when the report has been submitted to us by the Chief Inspector.

I am sure that the whole House will join in the sympathy extended not only to the persons who lost their lives in the aeroplane, but also to the lady who lost her life on the ground.

Will the Minister tell us whether, at the time, the aeroplane was under the control of air traffic control and was on the correct route as designated by air traffic control?

I prefer to await the full report by the Chief Inspector, but the point raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman is most apposite.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is not the first time that this or a similar Bill has been before the House. Four years ago the matters raised by the Measure were the subject of a considerable debate in another place. Founded on that debate—which itself was founded on a report of a committee of the legal society called Justice—a Bill was introduced into this House by me as one of those successful in the Ballot. It was, when called for Second Reading, talked out in this place by a Labour Minister speaking on a previous Bill until 4 o'clock, a familiar manoeuvre.

The Bill was introduced on a second occasion by me in the same form, also on a Friday, and on that occasion the Second Reading was talked out by the House being counted out after 2.15 p.m., another familiar manoeuvre in this place.

Last Session, a very similar Bill was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Eyre), who, unfortunately, cannot be with us today. That Bill, though not really welcomed by the Attorney-General, secured a Second Reading in the House. It went into Committee and, although most of its Clauses were opposed at that stage by the Attorney-General all its Clauses—with the exception of one, dealing with the question of malice—got through Committee.

The Bill also got through its Report stage on the Floor of the House. The Measure then came up for Third Reading in this place when, after considerable debate, it was again talked out, this time by an hon. Gentleman opposite speaking on the Bill until 4 o'clock.

A further day was then assigned for the Bill. 13th June, 1969. On that occasion the Bill failed to continue its progress through the House because the Government had decided on the previous evening, which was a Thursday, to suspend the 10 o'clock rule for the sake of another private hon. Member's Measure, the Divorce Reform Bill.

The debate on that Measure, as hon. Members may recall, ran through the night to the extent of cutting out the following day's, Friday's, business. In that way this or a similar Measure has, on three, if not four, occasions been pre vented, by various parliamentary manoeuvres, from succeeding.

It is regrettable that things should be in this state, because whatever views there may be about the matters in the Bill, I do not think that anybody can deny that they are matters which need to be discussed and decided upon in this place. They affect three branches of the law which directly concern the Press and broadcasting authorities—first, the law of contempt; secondly, the law of defamation; and, thirdly, the Official Secrets Act.

The original statement of the noble Lord the Lord Chancellor in 1966, in the other place, does not now sound particularly convincing as a reason for not wishing to pursue the matter. On that occasion the reason was that the Government would not have time in that Session for legislation on the issue. Since that occurred the Government have had considerable time for other forms of private Members' legislation. We have had Measures on homosexuality and abortion. We are told that we are now to have a Bill on hare coursing. Apparently all these things are more important, in the eyes of the Government, than the matters raised by this Bill, which is of fundamental importance to the Press and the public.

Even the Prime Minister said in the House, in response to a Question, that he was convinced of the abhorrence that should be held for hare coursing as a sport. After representing for 25 years his constituency of Huyton, which is almost within shouting distance of the Waterloo Cup, that might have occurred to the right hon. Gentleman rather sooner. I feel that in all these manœuvres about private Members' legislation there is, even in the highest circles, some element of hypocrisy.

Accordingly, there is nothing new that I can tell the House about the Bill, and for that reason I would only be repeating what is on record if I were to say a lot about its provisions, and particularly about the Clauses relating to contempt and defamation.

The Attorney-General will note that the Bill includes a Clause about malice. However, that provision could willingly be struck out in Committee, if he feels particularly averse to it. The Measure does not include a new Clause which was added in Committee to the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hall Green and, as far as I am concerned, that could willingly be brought into the Measure. My real point in moving the Bill at this stage is that it is surely time that the Government faced up to the fact that something should be done on this issue.

Perhaps something should be said on the other issue, that of the Official Secrets Act, which is not altogether in the same state as it was when the similar Measure was before the House on the last occasion. Hon. Members will be familiar with the way in which the Official Secrets Act, 1911, was passed. We have today done some quick work with two Bills which have passed through this Chamber. However, we have by no means equalled the record of 1911.

The Official Secrets Act was brought in on a hot August afternoon. It occurred on 18th August though this may be hard to believe. The summer of 1911 was the hottest of any summer in the 20th century. The Measure went through this House—not only on Second Reading but in Committee, on Report and to complete its Third Reading—to the extent of only eight columns of HANSARD. That is the amount of attention that was given to the Official Secrets Act in 1911, under a Liberal Government. It is not a Measure which one can say ever received a great amount of consideration. Indeed, it is fair to say that it is not a Measure of which those who originally drafted it would be very proud.

The Act is drafted in the widest and vaguest terms. As has been frequently pointed out, it makes almost anybody liable to almost any offence. It has recently been stated that there are only two legislative enactments in the world in which it appears that anyone being accused of any anti-State activity must be found to be guilty. One is Section 2 of the British Official Secrets Acts and the other is Article 58(10) of the Soviet Criminal Code.

A number of commentators have fastened on the Act since the recent decision of the Attorney-General to institute prosecution. It is not my purpose to infringe any sub judice rule.

I hope not.

I had expressed the intention of not doing so. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware of the views which have been expressed in a recent leading article in The Times, which said that if the Act was strictly enforced there could scarcely be a civil servant, and certanly no member of the Government, who would not be prosecuted under it. Reading the announcement today of a statement by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister about the Gulf of Aqaba, I wonder whether he may or may not be prosecuted under the Act which, as far as I can see, applies to any person.

The article in The Times said that the Attorney-General had a discretionary power. This, of course, refers to that peculiar provision of the Measure which brings in the Attorney-General's fiat. Other commentators have challenged that view. They have said that, so far from being a discretionary power or a judicial decision, the Attorney-General is really making a political decision when he acts under this Statute. It would be interesting to have his comment.

The object of the Bill is to remove all this doubt, which must be very unsatisfactory to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and put the whole test of the Act on the question of public benefit or public justification. What disturbs people more about the Act is not the cases which are prosecuted but those which are not. I cite the recent case of an employee in the Ministry of Health who wrote articles in the Spectator and in the News of the World and was proceeded against by his own Department and sacked. In reply to Questions from me, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he had no intention of prosecuting the two newspapers, although surely they were the more guilty.

This does suggest that there is a tendency under the Act to go for the soft culprit and not for the real culprit. It can be fairly said that there is great and growing disquiet about the way in which these things have been operated. The Prime Minister produced a White Paper, after the Fulton Committee, called "Information and the Public Interest". It was a fair comment in The Times that it added nothing at all. What I hope will make a useful contribution is the committee which has been set up by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition under the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Epsom (Sir P. Rawlinson) to go into the matter and try to reduce it to a sensible state.

It is with the object of seeing that the question is not allowed to rest in its present unsatisfactory state that I ask for the Bill to be given a Second Reading.

I think that it was Dr. Johnson who said that a second marriage is a triumph of hope over experience. I do not know what he would say about a third attempt to introduce a Bill on this subject. The nature of the attendance in the Chamber is an indication that it has certainly not commanded much support either in the House or anywhere else. I regret to say that, while I admire the pertinacity of the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), I find the Bill to be even more full of objections than its predecessors.

The Bill concerns in some aspects the delicate but important balance between the interests of the Press, of the Executive and of the ordinary citizen. In my view, the Bill, like its predecessor, would tend to upset the present balance which, I think, on the whole is about right, and would do so by tilting it excessively against the individual citizen in the law of libel. I think that to some extent also, if it became law, it would diminish some of the present safeguards ensuring a fair trial.

A curious feature of the Bill is that, in some of its provisions, it rejects the Amendments which were found necessary in Committee on the Bill sponsored by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Eyre) and reverts to texts which that Committee found unsatisfactory.

For instance, Clause 11(2) provides that the Bill shall apply to Scotland, but, of course, there are important distinctions and differences between the law and administration of justice in Scotland and the law and administration of justice in England and Wales. To disregard that salient fact, when the previous Bill was amended by the exclusion of Scotland from its provisions, seems remarkable.

Again, there is a difficulty in the very first Clause of the Bill, which proposes that proceedings for contempt of court shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Attorney-General. I am touched that the hon. Gentleman should have such confidence in me and other holders of my office.

It reflects the fact, which, I think, is now well known to the people of our country at large, that the Attorney-General, when he makes a decision, albeit in a matter of contempt of court or under the Official Secrets Act, does so in a quasi-judicial way, considering only the interests of justice and the public interest and, of course, disregarding entirely any political or party political consideration. The Attorneys-General who have preceded me and I myself have been faithful to this doctrine and duty.

However, Clause 1 of the Bill proposes that proceedings for contempt of court

"…within the United Kingdom shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Attorney General."

The matter could not be remedied simply by substituting the Lord Advocate for the Attorney General. I understand from my colleagues in Scotland that that would be unacceptable north of the Border.

I am advised that his position is that of the Public Prosecutor. All criminal proceedings in Scotland are brought on behalf of the Lord Advocate. Since proceedings for newspaper contempt are usually based on prejudice to the defence, one can see that there might conceivably be a conflict of interest if the Lord Advocate's consent was always required.

Moreover, in view of the principle of secrecy in pre-trial investigations, which is the practice in Scotland, proceedings for contempt have been much more common in Scotland than in England and Wales. Not only have they in many cases been brought by individuals, but in many of those cases individual complainants have succeeded. The case of Stirling v. Associated Newspapers Limited, in 1960, was an illustration of that.

There are other aspects of the Bill in Clauses 6 and 7 which would create special difficulties in regard to Scotland and make the Bill unacceptable. I do not propose to traverse at length every Clause in the Bill. We have been through all this before, but there are one or two aspects of it to which I think I should refer. I have already commented upon Clause 1. It takes account of what happened in Standing Committee on the previous Bill in that it no longer attempts to define the scope of contempt.

Touched as I am by the confidence it reflects on the holder of my office, I hold the view that it is not right to take away the right of the individual citizen in proceedings for contempt. I observe that the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) is now occupying his place on the Opposition Front Bench. He may not share the same view as I do, as he himself was pursued by a private individual in regard to contempt—and pursued unsuccessfully.

It is questionable whether the Attorney-General should have the last word in every case, which is what the Clause proposes. Suppose, for example, complaint was made about some comment on proceedings in which a Ministerial colleague of the Attorney-General, as representing the Crown, was a party. Would the complainant be entirely satisfied with the Attorney-General's decision not to act? It would be much better if the Attorney-General could say, "I do not think that your complaint justifies me in instituting proceedings for contempt, but you are welcome to test my opinion by taking it to court yourself and persuading the court that my view is wrong".

It is the case, I think, that private proceedings would not take place very often. It is an expensive business. In practice, in all the cases—and there have been quite a number referred to me since I have been Attorney-General—except one, where I thought proceedings ought to be brought against a newspaper and the newspaper in that case admitted its fault, my refusal to take proceedings for contempt has ended the matter.

I nevertheless feel that a situation could arise where a refusal by the Attorney-General of the day, whoever he may be, could leave a sense of grievance. Therefore, the present arrangement should stand where, in practice, on the rare occasions when contempt proceedings are brought they are brought by the Attorney-General. There may conceivably be a case in an emergency situation where the complainant should be able to go straight to the court himself.

As to Clause 2, in regard to a repetition of the defamatory matter, there is no need for the Clause. I earlier expressed the view in discussion of the matter that where there was a genuine newspaper campaign to expose a scandal mere repetition of the words complained of could not amount to contempt. I am glad that my views were confirmed in a judgment of the Court of Appeal in Thomson v. Times Newspapers, in which Lord Justice Salmon said that he

"could not think why the fact that the plaintiff had issued a writ for libel should preclude the defendant newspaper…from making any further comment about him.…

It was a widely held fallacy that the issue of a writ stifled further comment, but I know of no authority which supports the view that further comment would amount to contempt of court. Once a newspaper had justified, and there was some prima facie support of justification, the plaintiff could not obtain an interlocutory injunction to restrain the newspaper from rebutting the matters complained of.… It seemed equally obvious that no other newspaper which sought to do so had committed contempt."

In my view, that judgment indicates that there is no need for Clause 2.

Clause 3(1) corresponds with Clause 4 of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Hall Green. Although its purpose is sound, and I approve of its purpose, I pointed out on the Second Reading of the former Bill that its drafting could do with a great deal of improvement. We went to some pains in Committee to achieve an improvement. It may carry weight with right hon. Gentlemen opposite when I say that the improvement had the enthusiastic support and approval of the hon. and learned Member for Northwich (Sir J. Foster), and, indeed, of the then promoter of the Bill. For some reason best known to himself, the hon. Member for Ludlow has seen fit to reject the work of the Committee in respect of Clause 3(1). I think that that can only reflect the view that his heart is not really in his Bill.

That is completely wrong. The suggestion that the heart of an hon. Member cannot be in a Bill which he has presented to the House in three successive Sessions is surely hardly tenable.

If the hon. Member's heart is in his Bill, his mind did not run much to the Bill. After all the painstaking effort we managed to amend the Clause in a way which might have made it a modest little piece of reform of the law of libel, but the hon. Member has thought it not worth while to retain it in his Bill.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is confusing two Bills. This is a separate Bill from that which was introduced by the hon. Member for Hall Green.

Yes, of course it is a separate Bill, but Clause 3(1) was in the original text of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Hall Green. It was rejected by the Committee, but the Amendment which was the product of much labour took its place. However, I do not want to quarrel with the hon. Member, whose zeal in this matter I of course respect.

Clause 3(2) is new, but it is wholly unnecessary. It would seem that the hon. Member, although I do not criticise him for this in view of the considerable volume of law reform for which the Government have been responsible, has overlooked the Civil Evidence Act, which implemented the Fifteenth Report of the Law Reform Committee. The Clause provides a defence of justification where the words complained of impute the commission of a criminal offence and the plaintiff at the time of publication has been convicted of that offence and the conviction has not been set aside. This situation is already provided for by Section 13 of the Civil Evidence Act. Clause 3(2), therefore, is quite unnecessary as that is the law at present.

Clause 4 reproduces Clause 5 of the earlier Bill, but the law already gives sufficient protection to reports of foreign proceedings in circumstances where they were matters of genuine public interest.

In my view, the law on this matter is pretty well right as it is. As I explained on an earlier occasion, the law is set out in Webb v. The Times Publishing Company, in which it was stated that there is qualified privilege if the subject matter is of legitimate and proper interest to the English newspaper-reading public. In the words of the learned judge, there must be

"…a legitimate and proper interest as contrasted with an interest which is due to idle curiosity or the desire for gossip."

Idle curiosity and gossip do not warrant the protection which is afforded by qualified privilege.

Clause 5 reproduces Clause 6 of the earlier Bill. Here again, the hon. Gentleman has thought it right to reject the work of amendment which took place in regard to the earlier Bill to cure what were clear drafting difficulties.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not accuse me of rejecting or discounting things. My Bill and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Eyre) both came to grief. Surely all we are doing now is starting again. It was not my wish that it should be done in this way. This is the situation in which we have been placed by the Government.

The hon. Gentleman has introduced the Bill. I should have thought that he would have applied his mind at least to remedying in the Bill the defects which were found in the text of the previous Bill. That would not have involved a great deal of initiative on his part. The object of Clause 5 is unobjectionable, but its defects in drafting are considerable and were amended in an earlier stage of the previous Bill.

Clause 6 reproduces Clause 7 of the earlier Bill, but this Clause is wholly unacceptable. It appeared in an earlier Bill, but was withdrawn at the instance of the then promoter, on the ground that he had been convinced that it would be better to leave questions of malice to the jury. I agree with that proposition. In my view, juries are admirably constituted to decide questions of malice. I am comforted in that reflection by the fact that that view has the support of the Master of the Rolls, the present Lord Chancellor and his immediate predecessor—

And mine.

—and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Roebuck), a distinguished journalist to whose views the House will pay most careful attention.

Clause 7 appears to be a compromise between the corresponding provisions of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Hall Green, which provided that damages should be assessed by judges rather than by juries, and the arguments I advanced against that Clause in Committee. It purports to give the Court of Appeal the same power to vary awards of damages made by juries as it has to vary awards made by judges. The real issue is: do we want juries to decide the question of damages, or a single judge?

My view is that, here again, juries are probably the appropriate body to decide the matter. Juries are essential in serious criminal cases and of great value in civil cases affecting the character and reputation of the citizen. The right to have one's character valued by one's peers—by one's fellow countrymen—is not something to be lightly surrendered.

The fear has been expressed in some quarters that juries tend to award unreasonably high damages against newspapers because they are prejudiced against them; but I do not believe that this fear is justified. My view is that a jury is as fair an assessor of damages as anyone. Juries are far better educated than they were. They are drawn from a wide range of the community. It can safely be said that their standard of intelligence and judgment is now higher than it has ever been.

In addition, the Court of Appeal has the power to set aside verdicts where awards of damages are utterly unrelated to the needs of the case. In fact, the Court of Appeal has on occasion gone a very long way towards indicating what in its view a second jury should award, even though it has not substituted its own assessment as the proper amount. Accordingly, Clause 7 is, in my view, as unacceptable as was its predecessor.

Clause 8 is the Clause dealing with one aspect or the Official Secrets Acts. It seeks to provide a new defence to those charged under Section 2(2) of the 1911 Act with the receipt of information supplied in contravention of the Act. The House will note that the Clause does not seek to affect the liability of those who supply the information in contravention of Section 2(1). The defence that it seeks to provide for the recipient of unauthorised information is that the receipt of the information was not prejudicial to the public interest.

It follows that the question whether the public interest has been injured or prejudiced would be a matter to be determined by a court—by a judge. That is not an issue which can be satisfactorily determined in that way. It is not a justiciable issue at all. I said this when the previous Bill containing a similar Clause was in Committee:

"It is not a matter of law, nor necessarily is it a matter of weighing up facts relating to a particular incident. It may often raise political, diplomatic or international issues upon which the judge ought not to have to adjudicate. It may raise issues more suitable for deliberation in Parliament than at the Old Bailey."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee C; 16th April, 1969, c. 49–50.]

The courts have rightly regarded public policy as an unruly horse and have been extremely reluctant to pronounce upon it. To ask the courts to determine matters which I submit are properly for Parliament is to bring the judges into politics. For that reason, I advise the House, as I did when the previous Bill was before the House, that this Clause should be rejected.

My conclusion is that this Bill is even less satisfactory than the Bill which was before the House on Report a year ago, and I am not surprised that it has failed to attract support.

When first speaking on the Bill the Attorney General quoted Dr. Johnson's comment on marriage and applied it to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More). Dr. Johnson, however, would have approved of my hon. Friend's pertinacity in proceeding with this Bill or with Bills of another kind supported by others of my hon. Friends. I disagree with the Attorney-General, because I believe that changes in the law are called for, for different reasons, in respect of each one of the three matters dealt with in the Bill; namely, contempt of court, defamation and official secrets. How these changes can be best effected is a matter for debate.

Therefore, when the Attorney-General gives the impression—and I do not mean this in a personal sense—that we are entitled to be complacent about the state of the law in these three matters I think he is in error. It is of great importance to a society like ours, which should be an open society, that matters should be kept secret only when they are of the gravest importance, and there should be the power and right to comment and criticise with the greatest of freedom. There must be a balance, and the present law imposes such a balance between a person's right to commentate and the right of another to have his reputation not wrongly traduced.

My hon. Friend referred to the committee in which I am at present engaged in a study of these three matters. I do not disguise from him the difficulties that surround them and that my greatest anxiety is over the difficulty of how to deal with official secrets, which are covered in Clause 8. I have definite views about defamation and contempt of court, but the matter of official secrets is one of the greatest difficulty.

Clause 1 covers contempt of court. What should be eliminated but has not been, even though we welcomed the statement of the law by Lord Justice Salmon in Thomson v. The Times is the element of uncertainty. The commentator does not know when he makes the comment whether or not he may be in danger of contempt of court. We should introduce into the law a degree of certainty so that a curtain can be brought down, as it were, after which the commentator knows that there is no right to comment if comment would deter witnesses from giving evidence or might influence the court.

No one—least of all journalists—wants to see trial by newspaper or television. What everyone wants to see is proper trial with proper evidence given to the court. But it is wrong when a newspaper is engaged in one of its most important public roles, that of exposure, probing and investigating, that it should be hampered and restricted, as I think news- papers are now, by the uncertainty of the law of contempt.

However, whilst I want to see changes I do not believe that the Bill deals with the matter in Clauses 1 and 2 in the way in which I feel that the law needs to be changed. For instance, it may well be said that once a man has been arrested, or the summons or complaint has been issued and served, comment must be restricted and must avoid anything that would deter witnesses or influence the court. But only then could a pending criminal case be affected. In a civil action I think it highly unlikely that in any circumstances a judge would be so influenced that the course of justice would be affected by any comments when he thereafter tries the case alone.

However, when a case is to be tried by judge and jury the order for such a trial should bring to an end the unrestricted right to comment, and thereafter the commentator must be on guard against deterring witnesses or influencing the court. I should like the publisher and those engaged in publication to be afforded certainty so that they know where they stand, so that they know when they can comment and when they must cease to comment. Clauses 1 and 2 are not adequate for that.

I now turn to the law of defamation. It is some years since Lord Diplock in the case of Slim v. Daily Telegraph opened his judgment by commenting about the law of defamation. Those who practise in this branch of the law know only too well how complex it is and the pitfalls into which even the lawyer can so easily fall if he is not expert in it. It has become so complicated that it calls for change and reform. As I have said before, most of it is lawyers' law, in the sense that it has been made mostly by the judges. This House is usually to blame for the complexities of legislation, but here it is lawyers who have made it so complex that difficulties are created. Where we have complexity we also get uncertainty, and then there is unfairness and a restriction of the right of free expression, which is a characteristic of the present law of defamation.

There should be simplicity over the defences to an action for defamation, which should perhaps be divided into two—justification, which is that what was said or written was true, or privilege. That privilege would contain the absolute privilege of reporting anything said in this House or in a court of law and the extension of qualified privilege to bring within it the present defence of fair comment.

I believe that it would be the general view that if a man writes about something in the public interest honestly and with good faith, has taken reasonable care to ascertain the facts and believes them to be true, and if the comment could reasonably be made upon those facts, that should be a defence to a claim for defamation. If we could obtain simplicity by bringing this defence under the umbrella of qualified privilege, which itself is only a part of privilege, we should eliminate all the complications arising from the defence of fair comment and the element of malice which must be introduced.

I agree with the Attorney-General about the position of the jury. It is right that it should be retained to make a decision where a man says that he has been defamed. The existence of a jury is a protection to newspapers. Potential plaintiffs know that there is a jury and the risks which may be involved, the great range that there may be in the damages given by a jury. It may sound paradoxical, but this is regarded by those with experience of advising newspapers as a protection. It is interesting to note that in one of the most recent libel actions damages of about £40,000 were given but not against a newspaper; a newspaper was not involved.

The jury should be retained, but we must ensure that the law is sufficiently simple and clear to permit the judge to direct the jury on the law and for it to understand what it is about. Part of the difficulty is that sometimes juries do not know what they are about.

Again, I think we should consider whether or not—this applies to the whole field of civil wrongs—we should examine carefully whether the courts should have argument addressed to them about the quantum of damages. I believe that a good deal of work can and should be done in this respect and that it should not be neglected.

I turn to the third matter in the Bill—official secrets. As my hon. Friend said, Section 2 of the 1911 Act is more akin to Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code. Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act is directed towards the deliberate passing of information which is intended and calculated to be of advantage to an enemy, and I would not have thought that anybody in this House would regard the principle behind that section as other than perfectly correct. That must be an offence. It is a matter which should be dealt with by the criminal law.

However, it is difficult to believe that the Minister of Housing and Local Government has any official secret or that the Department of Health and Social Security can have secrets. Of course, they have confidences, like any other person. Whether it be a large company or a small shop or an individual, everybody has his secrets and confidences which he does not wish to have betrayed. But can it be said that these matters are official secrets which bring with them all the sanctions of the criminal law if they are betrayed?

On the other hand, in other Departments of State there can be secrets the betrayal and passing on of which and the receipt and publication of which could, in another sense, affect the security of the State, the wellbeing and the order of the State, or, indeed, the economic interests of the State. Section 2 says that if I am told anything by anybody who holds office under the Crown and I pass on that information, I am guilty of an offence. We know perfectly well that many people have been guilty of an offence under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act; but the Act left the widest discretion and there was a requirement to have the leave of the Attorney-General before a prosecution took place. For that reason there are few prosecutions. However, it is not right that in our system of law we should create a situation in which offences cannot be properly prescribed and where there can be such a wide area of discretion.

I do not pretend that it is at all easy to define what is a secret, what is a matter which should be kept within the knowledge of those who have responsibility in government and which they have the right to retain, failing which the criminal law is invoked. In other matters there are the disciplines of the Civil Service and the disciplinary powers which can be exercised. The civil law can be exercised, in the same way as the chemist in I.C.I. or the scientist in British Petroleum who betrays company confidences or secrets can have the civil law brought against him—and, in addition, of course, there is the sanction of dismissal.

My right hon. and learned Friend will have taken cognisance of the fact in the deliberations of his own committee that apparently in the United States they seem to manage very well without an Official Secrets Act at all.

But they have classified information, do they not? That means that somebody has to classify it. Therefore, a Minister is doing the classification. I know that the system is different from ours. One should examine—in fact, one has examined—these various matters. One will take into account what is behind my hon. Friend's intervention. But I cannot conceal from the House that I feel the gravest disquiet in permitting a situation to arise whereby information can freely be given and published about categories of matters which may not directly deal with the security of the State but do affect the life and order of the State.

This is the difficulty. I believe that a change has to be made because I do not believe that Section 2 is tolerable in its present form. It has lived a chequered life and the time has come to change it. But, with respect to my hon. Friend, I do not believe that in Clause 8 he has met the problem or dealt with the mischief which is inherent in Section 2. Therefore, while I congratulate him on the gallantry of his attempts and on his pertinacity, and while welcoming the fact that he continues to bring before the House these matters which are of great public importance, I have very grave disquiet about the method by which he has sought to deal with what I consider to be substantial problems.

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General that this Bill is too riddled with defects for it to be right for the House to give it a Second Reading.

I wish to speak shortly, in view of my right hon. and learned Friend's remarks on Clause 8. I agree with everything which the right hon. and learned Member for Epsom (Sir P. Rawlinson) said about this Clause, both as to the unsatisfactory nature of the present law relating to official secrets and the very great difficulty that faces anyone who tries to amend it and put something better in its place.

I was, however, a little concerned at what was the main reason which the Attorney-General gave in advising the House that this would not be an acceptable Clause. If I understood him correctly, he felt that it was not right to put upon the courts—and, in particular, upon Her Majesty's judges—the task of deciding whether or not publication of a particular matter was in the public interest. He expressed the view that that would be bringing the judges into politics and requiring the judges to decide matters which were more properly decided by this House.

My anxiety is this. Not long ago we discussed the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, All Saints (Mr. Walden) on the right of privacy. That Bill received extremely wide support in this House, and my hon. Friend withdrew it only because of the Home Secretary's announcement that he was setting up the Younger Committee to investigate this whole subject. It was a crucial part of that Bill, which was founded on a report of Justice, that among the defences which should be open to newspapers would be the defence that publication of the matter in question was shown to be in the public interest. The actual drafting of my hon. Friend's Bill went even wider and suggested that the defence should be open to a newspaper that it had reasonable grounds for thinking that publication was in the public interest. I think that went too far.

In any event the point which was a crucial part of the Bill was that the issue should be justiciable—that it should be able to be tried before the courts. If we accept the idea which has been expressed by my right hon. and learned Friend today I think that we strike a grave blow at the possibility of introducing a law of privacy into this country at all, and I should be very sorry if that were to be the position. It does not seem to me prima facie to be an intolerable burden to put upon the courts.

The courts are not to be expected to express a view whether a matter which is published is either right or wrong. They are merely asked to express a view whether it is right that it should be published. In other words they are asked to express a view whether the interests of freedom of speech should prevail over any other interest—in the case about which I am concerned, the interest of the new right of privacy which I hope will be established in our law, and in the present case the interest of protecting from publication official secrets.

It seems to me that this is a matter which a court is perfectly well able to weigh and decide. It is not so very far away from the matter which courts already have to decide now in the law of defamation when considering the defence of fair comment and whether or not the matter is fair comment on a matter of public interest. In those circumstances, the courts have to decide whether or not the matter in question is one of public interest.

So, while not in any way wishing to dissuade the House from following the course which my right hon. and learned Friend has recommended, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend and others will consider further the particular reason which he has given for rejecting the Bill and keep open as far as possible the question of whether matters of this kind can properly be decided by the courts.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

First, the Bill would enable Parliament, if it so desired and if it so resolved, to amend two-thirds of the legislation passed by central Government which at the moment is not subject to amendment by Parliament. It is a representative truth to say that for every piece of legislation passed by Parliament twice as much is passed by Ministers. This is quite apart from legislation introduced by local authorities under delegated powers. At the moment, when we give Ministers power to legislate by Statutory Instrument, we forgo any right other than to accept or reject the result of granting these powers.

If literally thousands of amendments are accepted each year to legislation which passes through the House, it is in the highest degree improbable that no amendment is needed to legislation by Statutory Instrument made by Ministers under delegated powers. Moreover, a great number of the Amendments made by the House to Measures passing through it are not debated. A Minister will rise and recommend an Amendment, either in Committee or in the House, saying merely, "This is a drafting Amendment", acknowledging, in other words, that the Bill as introduced was badly drawn and that, if passed into law, it would have consequences not intended by its originators.

If Bills carefully prepared by Departments are peppered with drafting errors, how improbable must it be that Statutory Instruments produced by draftsmen no more skilled than those who draft Bills can be innocent of these defects. What is more, both by weight and by numbers of pages, there is twice as much legislation made by Statutory Instrument as there is passed by the House through its normal processes in Committee and on the Floor of the House.

Broadly speaking there are two procedures for delegated legislation. First, there is that which requires an affirmative Resolution of the House in order to have statutory effect, and second, there is that which becomes law automatically unless either House of Parliament passes a Prayer petitioning Her Majesty not to confirm it. In the first case, the Measure must come before Parliament; in the second, the negative Resolution procedure, it need never come before the House, although a draft is nominally laid upon the Table. In the first case, moreover, it is the common experience that Ministers, of whatever party allegiance, do not seek to justify the detailed wording of their Statutory Instruments, but, with crocodile tears pouring from their eyes, they point out that the House has no power to amend and must either accept or reject.

Time and again, judges bemoan the fact that Parliament passes badly drafted legislation, legislation which is ambiguous or self-contradictory, which leaves gaps which were plainly unintended, or which covers situations not intended to be covered. Statutory Instruments are just as guilty of this defect as are Acts of Parliament.

We all know that Bills are passed through the House without our individually having read them. I do not believe that there has ever been a Member of Parliament who could claim to have read through every Bill passed during his membership. How much more certain is it that only a tiny proportion of Statutory Instruments can ever be read by Members. We even have the outrageous state of affairs in which we are asked to pass an affirmative Resolution to a Statutory Instrument on which the Statutory Instruments Committee has not yet reported. Thank goodness we are bound by our rules, so that the Chair draws to the attention of the House in this circumstance that a Statutory Instrument has not yet been reported on by that Committee.

In those circumstances, the existence of the Statutory Instruments Committee becomes farcical. If it subsequently reports that a Statutory Instrument is ultra vires after the House has already given its assent, of what benefit is its report? The Statutory Instruments Committee is set up as a safeguard not to report upon the wisdom of any Measure, but whether the powers which the Minister is purporting to exercise in making his Order exist at his behest and command. I should think that that is an adequately limited task for the Statutory Instruments Committee to perform, and it is doubly unsatisfactory that it should on occasion be denied even this limited task.

The second evil which the Bill seeks to remedy concerns the negative Resolution procedure. In private discussions with hon. Members of both sides of the House, it has become clear that very few of our colleagues know the rules which apply to the assessment of the 40 days during which Prayers to annul may be brought before the House. Most of our colleagues know that there are 40 days. What many do not know is that they are largely illusory. They include Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, upon which no Prayer can be entertained—on Saturdays and Sundays because the House does not sit, and on Fridays for procedural reasons.

Moreover, when Parliament is dissolved and a General Election is held and a new Parliament is sworn in, even the days when no business is conducted by the House, except the swearing in of Members, count as part of the 40 days.

To indicate that this is not merely a hypothetical question. I would point out that when the Exeter Order to extend the boundaries of the City of Exeter eventually came before this House, three of the last four days on which a Prayer to annul that Order could have been entertained were actually occupied by swearing in Members. Had that process been a little slower and occupied one additional day, there would have been no opportunity for the House to exercise the right—on which it divided—to pray against that Order. Under the negative resolution procedure, that Order would have become law without any opportunity for the House to debate it. Even had the Leader of the House been persuaded, however strongly, that it ought to be debated, he would have been powerless to give time, because in the computation of the 40 days, there is this ridiculous rule as a result of which many of the days are illusory.

Incidentally, when I sought advice from the authorities of the other House concerning the Exeter Order, it became apparent that the method used by the House of Lords authorities for computing the 40 days gave a different result from the method used by the authorities of the House of Commons. The result was that one further day was made available in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons, although both were pursuant to the same words in the same Act. I am sure it will be agreed that that is an entirely intolerable state of affairs.

It may be that if the Bill receives a Second Reading and goes to Committee there will be those, including, perhaps, those who speak for the Government, who will feel that a period of 40 effective days for praying is too long. I should be happy, as I am sure would every hon. Member supporting the Bill, to consider with an open mind whether the number of effective days for entertaining negative Resolutions should be 40, or a lesser or greater number, but what is incontrovertible is that the number of days should not be a matter of caprice and fortune.

It should not depend on whether there is a period of interruption by an election, whether hon. Members are being sworn in, or the day of the week on which the draft Regulation or Order is laid before the House, and, therefore, how many Saturdays, Sundays, and Fridays there are within the period of 40 days, on which no such Prayers can be entertained.

This must be a matter of great constitutional importance if we are concerned, as I hope we all are, that Parliament should be made more, rather than less, relevant to the affairs of our country. There is widespread evidence that many people, and particularly younger people, consider that our parliamentary institutions have become less and less relevant to day-to-day life. This is an attempt to make Parliament more relevant.

Let us bear in mind that many of the things which affect people's day-to-day lives are controlled not by Acts of Parliament, but by delegated legislation. Whether we are dealing with speed limits, the handling of food in shops, or weights and measures regulations, these are all matters which have the force of law by reason of Statutory Instruments, and not by reason of detailed legislation which is subject to amendment by the House of Commons.

With that general introduction, I should like now to go through the contents of the Bill seriatim.

Clause 1 adopts the same definition of the term Statutory Instrument as appears in the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946. The then Solicitor-General, Sir Frank Soskice, as he then was, has authorised me to say that, as one of the sponsors of that Bill, he never intended that the vast amount of Statutory Instruments which flowed from it should not be subject to effective control by the House. He kindly offered to help me in drafting this Bill, should I require it, and I am grateful to him for that.

In Clause 2, we state that the power to amend Statutory Instruments is not retrospective. It is much more restrictive. It says that when, in future, the House passes legislation which includes the granting of new powers to legislate by Statutory Instrument, the House may, if it so wishes, and not if it does not so resolve, couple that new authority granted to Ministers with the restriction that in the exercise of that authority the House of Commons shall have the right to amend the draft Instrument.

In other words, if the Bill, including Clause 2, is passed, that does not mean that every Statutory Instrument will be subject to amendment or that Statutory Instruments made pursuant to all Acts passed after the Bill receives the Royal Assent will be subject to amendment. I do not doubt that that could be onerous for any Government, but it means that where the House gives wide powers to a Minister either to spend public money—for example, in the case of agricultural improvement grants—or in connection with planning procedures or transport matters—when it approves the principle behind such Measures but it wishes to make sure that they are properly drafted it can resolve to give itself the power to amend those Statutory Instruments before they pass into effect.

The time which I recommend for passing that kind of resolution is after the House has assented to the Third Reading of a Bill—that is, when the Bill can no longer be amended by the House of Commons—so that people know its final form, at least, as it leaves the Commons but before Royal Assent has been signified to it. That seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable moment to decide whether such a Measure shall be made subject to the Amendment of Statutory Instruments Act, as the Bill will be if it passes into law. This would be done by moving, after the Third Reading, a substantive Motion of the following form:

"That the… Bill shall be subject to the Amendment of Statutory Instruments Act, 1970."

Clause 3 seeks to give a more useful function to the Statutory Instruments Committee. I was advised by the authorities of the House, to whom I express my gratitude, that rather than refer to the Statutory Instruments Committee by name, a more suitable method of drafting would be to use the form which appears in Clause 3.

At present, the function of the Statutory Instruments Committee is to warn the House whether a Statutory Instrument, brought to the House for affirmative Resolution or laid in draft and subject to negative Resolution, is ultra vires. As I have pointed out, the Statutory Instruments Committee is sometimes so lightly regarded by the Government of the day—this is not a party political point—that some Measures are brought before the House without the Statutory Instruments Committee even having reported upon them.

It seems to me that it would be a useful function to give what I regard as an important Committee—the Statutory Instruments Committee—additional power not only to report to the House whether a Measure is ultra vires, but to recommend, if it so desires, that certain Amendments should be made to the Statutory Instrument.

There are two reasons for that. At the moment, when defects appear in a Statutory Instrument the Minister can either steamroller the Measure through, defects and all, or withdraw it and re-table it. What he cannot do is correct it by Amendment. In this case, if the Statutory Instruments Committee takes the view that certain provisions of a Statutory Instrument are ultra vires it could recommend their deletion or it could, for instance, recommend—and this would not exhaust its power of recommendation or amendment—a change in the form of words so as to bring it within the compass of the alleged enab- ling Acts. Both of these functions could broadly be described as being of assistance to the Government of the day rather than hampering them.

The Statutory Instruments Committee could also recommend to the House, with no more power than that of drawing attention to and making recommendations, any other amendments which it so desired, bearing in mind that since the House would have power of amendment this is something in which it would not normally indulge on what I would call a qualititative basis as opposed to a legalistic basis.

It would make service on the Committee much more interesting than it must be now. It is right that tribute should be paid to those who serve on the Committee. It must be a most arduous and, in many ways, a tiring and unrewarding job to read through each Statutory Instrument merely to see whether it falls within the proper compass of the alleged enabling Act. I would like to express my gratitude to colleagues on all sides of the House who undertake this necessary function and who receive little, if any, public appreciation for their labours.

While I see the merits of enlivening the proceedings of the Statutory Instruments Committee, is the proposal, since there is no Order Paper beforehand, that Amendments shall be proposed to what may be highly technical Statutory Instruments, discussed on the spot and incorporated into the Committee's Report—just like that?

The hon. Gentleman may have the advantage of me because I have never served on the Statutory Instruments Committee and I do not know the form which its proceedings take and how it draws up its report, any more than I have served on the Estimates Committee and know the form in which it draws up its report. That is a matter which could be left to the Committee, to decide the procedure, as to whether members of the Committee would have to give advance notice of Amendments they wished to make, and whether there would be a system of starred Amendments.

This is a matter of detailed importance but, since the House has never—to the best of my knowledge—laid down in Standing Orders the way in which our Select Committees proceed with respect to the type of activity I am dealing with, I should have thought that it could be left to the Committee concerned to give adequate notice to all members of the Committee about action it intends to take before any recommendations are finalised. If it transpired that it was not satisfactory to leave the matters undefined in that way, it would be much better to deal with it by amendment of the Standing Orders of the House by simple Resolution of the House rather than to try to embody it in an Act of Parliament, which is debatable in another place, too. This would affect only a House of Commons committee. That is a more appropriate way to deal with it.

Clause 4 reminds us of the different types of Statutory Instrument that the Bill is intended to encompass.

As we do not have the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946, before us, would the hon. Gentleman tell us whether paragraph (a) deals with positive or negative statutory instruments?

It deals with negative Resolution procedures.

The hon. and learned Gentleman may notice the importation of the expression "forty effective days", which is defined in Clause 5. Section 5 of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946, defines the period of 40 days in which negative Resolution Prayers may be moved. To save repetition, when I was earlier describing the General function of the Bill I tried to outline at some length the somewhat bizarre results of the definition in that section. Conversation with colleagues has shown that a substantial number of hon. Members are not aware how bizarre the definition is. They imagine that the 40 days in which we are permitted to pray against the confirmation of negative Resolution Statutory Instruments are 40 real days—in other words, 40 opportunities. This is far from being the case.

In paragraph (b), in regard to Section 4 of the Statutory Instruments Act, 1946, I did not need to use the number "forty" because it seemed to me that "ten" would more nearly meet the needs of both the Government and the critics of the Measure. The Statutory Instrument covered by paragraph (b) is one that becomes immediately effective but can subsequently be cancelled. There are Statutory Instruments subject to negative Resolution which do not become effective until the expiry of the 40 days. There are also Statutory Instruments which become effective immediately but can subsequently be cancelled.

It seemed to me, although this would be a perfectly reasonable point on which to entertain discussion in Committee, that where a Measure becomes of immediate effect the House should amend it much more speedily than in 40 effective days if it wishes to amend it. If it needs amending, it should be amended as soon as possible. If it does not become effective until after the 40 days, it will not suffer from the amendments being delayed until the fortieth day if necessary.

In Clause 5 I define "effective days" as follows:

"In this Act 'effective days' means days upon which the standing orders of the House of Commons permit the House to entertain resolutions of amendment under section 4 of this Act, but does not include days upon which such resolutions cannot be debated or determined because the House of Commons is engaged in swearing in honourable Members at the beginning of a new Parliament."

To the best of my knowledge, the reason why Prayers cannot be entertained when a new House is being sworn in is not because the Standing Orders of the House specifically exclude it but literally because the House is otherwise engaged. For this reason it was necessary to import that form of words.

We come in Clause 6 to the

"Calculation of praying time in respect of statutory instruments".

In this provision we say:

"In calculating the period of forty days under sections 5 and 6 of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 in which either"—

note "either"; previously it was "the House of Commons"—

"either House of Parliament may by resolution pray Her Majesty to annul, or not to confirm a statutory instrument, there shall be excluded—

(a) days upon which the standing orders of each House respectively prevent such prayers from being considered; and

(b) days upon which such prayers may not be considered, because that House of Parliament is prevented from considering such prayers because it is engaged in swearing in its members at the beginning of a new Parliament."

It is quite possible, for obvious reasons, that both Houses of Parliament will not occupy the same number of days in swearing in hon. Members at the beginning of a Parliament. Therefore, that is probably the best way of achieving these twin definitions, bearing in mind the different circumstances and the different numerical memberships of the two Houses.

Would the hon. Gentleman enlighten my ignorance by telling me if at present "time" in this context runs during a recess, or is the time occupied by a recess covered by sub-paragraph (a)?

I think I am right in saying that the clock which counts the 40 days stops when the House is not sitting for a period in excess of five days. This is entirely ludicrous and bizarre, but under this rule Saturdays and Sundays, being only two days, are counted by the clock; but when the House goes into recess for longer than five days, including Saturdays and Sundays, then the clock stops. However, once Parliament has reassembled at the beginning of a new Parliament, the clock immediately starts again.

In gathering the strings together I remind hon. Members, in case I have been unclear in my exposition of the Bill, that, in so far as it redefines the time in which Prayers may be entertained under the negative Resolution procedure and provides that Statutory Instruments be not confirmed by Her Majesty, it affects both Houses of Parliament. In so far as it gives power to amend Statutory Instruments, it gives that power exclusively to the House of Commons, and not to the House of Lords.

There may be those who think that the power should be given to the House of Lords, but I doubt whether that view would recommend itself widely. An adequate measure of protection will be given to the general public by the House of Commons being given this extra power.

I emphasise my motivation. I am not primarily concerned with people who oppose major legislation having a second bite at the cherry. Nor am I primarily concerned with the Opposition of the day being able to oppose at greater length the exercise of powers which they have already opposed when the enabling Act was passed.

What I am concerned with is the amount of defective draftsmanship that becomes the law of the land because it is inadequately examined and because there is no power to examine it even when the defectiveness is detected. The process of amendment at present is unofficial. I exclude certain cases which are famous because they are so rare. It was in this Parliament, for example, that the Minister concerned withdrew the initial Order setting up the Agricultural Training Board because of criticism in the House and subsequently retabled an altered Statutory Instrument. That was entirely commendable. It received widespread publicity because it was such a rare thing to happen.

On the contrary, it is in no way rare for Ministers to accept Amendments either on the Floor of the House or in Committee on a Bill. They often do so and are grateful for those Amendments. Very often, the Amendments proposed are not of a party political character. This House in its richness has, among its 630 Members, experts on practically every subject, I am happy to say, and many hon. Members have a more up to date and cogent expertise than the civil servants sitting in the Official Box, advising Ministers—although they are not operating at the moment.

I take as a case in point a Measure which was enacted with the full support of both sides of the House and which underwent a tremendous amount of amendment which turned it into an effective Act of Parliament. The Firearms Act, 1965, was drafted by the Home Office originally, presumably by people who considered themselves to be expert. But it was drafted in such a manner that one could drive a coach and horses through it. There was no definition of a loaded weapon, so that someone carrying a weapon in the public street with the magazine full of ammunition but without a cartridge in the breech would have been regarded as carrying an unloaded rather than a loaded weapon.

Those of us who served on the Standing Committee considering the Bill greatly appreciated the way in which the right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary of State for Wales, then Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, welcomed Amendments. Indeed, he paid tribute to them on Third Reading. No one suggests that the Home Office deliberately drafted an important Measure with incompetence. It was just that there were severe limitations on the technical knowledge of those whose duty it was to advise the then Home Secretary. This is not something unique to the Home Office. It is true of every Government Department that there are limitations to their expertise.

I remember not so long ago a Statutory Instrument which appeared in draft. It was to do with eggs. I forget the details, but it was intended to stop people from deeply refrigerating eggs and then selling them as fresh. But it was drafted in such a way that, if anyone had used any device to prevent a room from getting intolerably hot so that eggs would not go rotten at once, those eggs would have fallen within the definition of refrigerated eggs and, therefore, into a special category. There being no procedure for amendment of a Statutory Instrument on the Floor of the House, I telephoned the Department and pointed this matter out. The Statutory Instrument was corrected and reprinted.

I am not saying that, at the moment, there are not unofficial channels which can be and sometimes are used, but, apart from the redefining of "effective days"—the desirability of which I am sure no one could dispute—the gravamen of my case is as follows. When legislation which passes through this House needs such a wide degree of amendment as has been shown constantly by the appearance of drafting Amendments on the Order Paper, it stretches the bounds of probability beyond all reason that double the amount of legislation passing into law by Statutory Instruments by some entirely miraculous process should ensure that these defects are absent.

Therefore, if we want to achieve two ends which I should have thought every hon. Member would want to achieve—first, to take to heart the criticism of the courts about passing badly drafted legislation, which includes Statutory Instruments, and, secondly, to make Parliament a more relevant and more effective body than it is at the moment—it seems that this Measure offers a very real opportunity of achieving them.

I should be very happy indeed, as would the other sponsors of the Bill, if it is given a Second Reading, to discuss with an entirely open mind its detail in Committee and on Report. We could discuss whether 40 effective days is the right number and whether the right time to pass a Motion putting a Bill into effect is after Third Reading or not. I have an open mind on that. I certainly would not have the House believe that in choosing 40 effective days and 10 effective days respectively, I have seized upon an arithmetical number which I believe is inherently better than any other. I chose 40 effective days because under the existing provisions it is 40 days and because I suspect that most hon. Members believe 40 days already means 40 effective days.

With that explanation of what I confess is admittedly a somewhat complex subject, I hope that the House will give the Measure a Second Reading.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) on two things. The first is his assiduity in attendance which has enabled him to speak to his Bill. I was one who came to this House at what I thought a sufficiently early hour one morning to be able to move a Motion for a Ten-Minute Rule Bill. I found myself defeated by the hon. Member, who had arrived at a much earlier hour and had seized, as he was perfectly entitled to do, upon a defect in our procedures which enabled him to grab for his party all the opportunities for Ten-Minute Rule Bills this Session.

The hon. Member incurred a certain amount of odium on this side of the House which added to his difficulties in finding time to debate this subject, but he has attended regularly and, whereas we have seen that today certain Bills were reached but not discussed because their sponsors were not here, I congratulate him on being here and seizing his opportunity.

Secondly, I congratulate the hon. Member on the way in which he has presented his Bill. He has done so with great clarity. It was a lesson to some others to see how he presented his Bill, so far as I could see without a single note and with model clarity. I hope that he will not think that I have risen now out of any vindictive sense to oppose his Bill, for I assure him that that is not so. He has raised a most interesting subject, but one which I shall seek to persuade the House should not be dealt with in the way proposed in the Bill.

The hon. Member advances his case primarily on the grounds that there are so many drafting defects in legislation that it is not right that a large body of legislation, namely, subordinate legislation, should go through without the House having any powers to amend. That is an attractive argument, but the hon. Member fails to pay sufficient regard to the purpose of delegated legislation. It is because the House recognised a long time ago that the volume of legislation, and of necessary legislation, has become such that the House simply cannot scrutinise properly the whole of it. It must, therefore, try to divide the legislation into two parts—that which should go into Statutes and which the House will consider in detail, and that which ought to be delegated to Ministers, subject to the control of the affirmative or negative Resolution procedure.

It is essential to this distinction that there should not be the power to amend delegated legislation, otherwise we will be back where we started—that, is cluttering up the procedures of the House with a vast amount of work it is unable to undertake. The hon. Member has clearly understood and recognised this. He therefore puts Clause 2 into his Bill, which would immediately take away nearly everything which on the face of it the Bill proposed to do; namely, as the hon. Gentleman himself explained, it would ensure that this new procedure would not apply to all delegated legislation.

If the primary reason for the Bill is, as the hon. Member suggests, to enable us to perfect delegated legislation by being able to amend it, surely that should apply to all delegated legislation. How is the House to know at the end of the Third Reading of a Bill whether the delegated legislation to be made under that Bill will be subjected to error in drafting? The House cannot tell in advance. Therefore, if that is the true criterion, the House would be unable to decide whether to pass a Resolution such as is proposed in Clause 2.

It is my belief that the real object of this is not, as the hon. Gentleman has suggested, to enable us to correct drafting defects. I think that the real object emerged from a remark which he made almost in parentheses in a reference to the kind of legislation which is passed under the Agriculture Acts giving power to alter or amend procedures for agricultural grants.

I believe that what the hon. Member really wants to do is to have the power to alter not the drafting but the substance of that delegated legislation. I believe that Clause 2 is really intended to direct the mind of the House at the end of a Third Reading to whether it should try to claw back, as it were, some of the delegated legislation power which it is giving to the Minister in passing the Bill.

I do not believe that this half-way house will work. We must make up our minds. We either give the power of delegated legislation or we reserve it to the House.

The evil that is suggested is not as great as might at first appear. That was illustrated by the example which the hon. Member gave about the delegated legislation which he was unable to identify but which apparently related to the refrigeration of eggs. As the hon. Gentleman said, as soon as he realised that there was a defect in that legislation, he contacted the Minister; and it was, one gathered, a relatively simple and speedy matter for the Minister to lay before the House another piece of delegated legislation which amended the defect.

This is what happens. We, who in our professional capacity have to plough through delegated legislation, are well aware that there tends to be a great deal of amending legislation. That itself illustrates that it is a relatively simple matter. When there is a defect in a Statute it is far more serious, because it requires an Act of Parliament, with all the complicated procedures that that entails, going through both Houses of Parliament—Second Reading, Committee, Third Reading, Report and all the rest of it. This does not apply to delegated legislation, which can be dealt with quite simply.

Therefore, I do not think that the evil is as great as is suggested. I think that it was the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) who put forward the suggestion that in a much more limited field this House should have a power to amend—namely, where taxation or matters akin to taxation are dealt with by delegated legislation. The suggestion was that there should be power in this House to vary the amounts of any order which, in effect, imposes or varies a rate of taxation. It may be amending a levy which is imposed under a Statute which is frequently dealt with by delegated legislation.

Since this is dealing with a matter of tax, the level of which is peculiarly the responsibility of this House, it seems to me that a much more narrow provision of that kind might well merit the attention of the House.

I am interested in what the hon. and learned Member is saying, but would it not have been better had the Deputy Leader of the House been here to explain those matters and the history of the proposals made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) and others?

I do not think it is for the Deputy Leader of the House to be here. This is a Private Members' Day. We all recognise that it is a matter of surprise that this Bill has been reached at all. I have congratulated the hon. Member for Tiverton on being here to seize his opportunity, but I do not think there is any reason for criticising the Deputy Leader of the House. It is not that I am trying to talk out this Bill. I thought for one moment that that was the intention of the hon. Gentleman himself, as he occupied such a large proportion of the time available in moving his Bill.

With regard to the hon. Gentleman's point relating to 40 days, I wonder whether this is as bad as he suggests or whether his proposed Amendment would make matters any better. As I understand it, the effect of his definition of effective days is that there would always be at least 10 calendar weeks since there could only be four effective days in any calendar week. There will be at least 10 effective weeks before there could be any finality about any delegated legislation unless this special procedure referred to in Clause 4 (b) were adopted. That does not seem to me to be a very satisfactory procedure. I hope the hon. Gentleman is satisfied now that the Deputy Leader of the House has arrived in the Chamber.

Would my hon. and learned Friend agree that the purpose of the 40 days' period is to give time for thought—not to give 40 separate opportunities for praying?

Yes, I believe that to be the intention of the present legislation, and I would have thought it was right. The hon. Gentleman was complaining that weekends do not count. In my experience, if one is interested in a piece of delegated legislation, weekends are the most useful period in which to get down to it and give thought to it.

The hon. Member has drawn attention to one anomalous case where injustice or difficulty might have arisen under the present rules. If he has not already done so, perhaps that could be properly referred to the Select Committee on Procedure.

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I am very glad to reach this Adjournment debate. The waiting period has had its moments of tension.

I am grateful to have this opportunity to raise a matter which in the first instance affects a small businessman who is a constituent of mine, but the principle behind which, I am convinced, affects a large number of people.

While industry is increasingly dominated by giant combines, we must recognise that there is still a place for the little man. Quite a number of small specialist firms play a vital part in assisting the operations of their larger brethren. The man setting up his little business in manufacturing today faces considerable obstacles, particularly in regulations to be observed. Capital is of vital importance to him, and any unnecessary use of capital involved in the observance of regulations or the law could frustrate what could be useful contribution to the country's economy, particularly in exports.

A short while ago, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade is only too well aware, I took up with her the case of a constituent, Mr. Payne of Norwich, now operating a company manufacturing data input and associated computer equipment. Originally he hit on the idea of calling his company Keytronics Ltd. He was advised by the Business Names Registry that the name was acceptable. Shortly afterwards, the Companies Registry said that the name was acceptable for registration, and later a search in the Trade Marks Registry revealed that the word "Keytronics" was not registered as a trade mark. Subsequently, however, it transpired that another firm was using the name "Keytronics", and, after negotiation, it was found that this other firm had registered the name with the Business Names Registry 12 months earlier. As a result, my constituent had to cease trading, at least temporarily, until a new company could be formed under the present name of F. S. Payne and Son (Norwich) Ltd.

The most important effect of this change and delay was that it cost my constituent £300 to £500 of his vital capital.

I wrote to my hon. Friend, and her reply of 11th February included the following passage—I should read it slowly because, quite frankly, it is worded in such a way that it needs to be—

"The Registrar has power to refuse to register a name which in his opinion is undesirable, but he does not in general consider a name to be undesirable solely because it is the same as one already registered. Similarly, the Registrar of Companies, who regards as undesirable a proposed name for a company which is too like the name of a company already registered, does not in general regard the existence of a registered business name as a bar to his registering a company by a similar name."

After rereading that several times, I go round in ever-increasing circles.

The letter goes on:

"For these reasons no objection was raised in February 1969 to the proposed registration by Mr. E. S. Payne of the business name 'Keytronics' or to the later registration by him of a company by the name Keytronics Ltd., despite the earlier registration as a business name of 'Keytronics' by another proprietor."

This is ridiculous. In the interests of the small businessman, the fact of an earlier registration should be revealed.

Later in her letter, my hon. Friend quoted from the Jenkins Committee on Company Law, referring in particular to paragraph 443 of its report, which implied that it was impossible to compare a list of 400,000 company names with a register of 800,000 business names, and stated for that reason that the Companies Registry and Registry of Business Names do not attempt to maintain the type of contact which would have avoided a lot of trouble to my constituent and saved him £300 to £500.

I find this almost incredible in this day and age. With modern filing methods, such an operation could be one of quick simplicity. In the Library of the House, we have some young and extremely attractive lady assistants—

Hear, hear.

I say that because I admire their efficiency—lest it get me into trouble in certain quarters at home.

These young ladies demonstrate daily the miracles of modern reference systems in dealing with the often only too vague requirements of hon. Members. We all know how efficient their filing system in our own Library is. I am sure that these young ladies could introduce a system for the Board of Trade which would entail a fairly simple operation and be able to identify and compare all these names without great difficulty. My constituent, through his association with the computer industry, could do even more. Computers nowadays can give answers a darned sight more quickly than do some of the out-of-date methods at present used in some Departments.

It is not impossible to avoid the difficulties, pitfalls and expenses at present entailed. My constituent, in good faith, lost £300 to £500 in the labyrinth, with, I am informed, no chance of recovery from anyone. I realise that this state of affairs must affect quite a number of people, but I consider that he should have some recompense.

After considering this matter carefully for some time with my constituent and with others, I feel that it is time that a more up-to-date system was introduced at the Board of Trade to encourage and assist, not obstruct and financially penalise, people like Mr. Payne.

I hope that my hon. Friend and her Department will give the matter further consideration, not only so far as it concerns Mr. Payne but also other people, and, more important, arrange for close contact between the Business Names Registry and the Companies Registry, which appears to be completely nonexistent at present. I get the impression that they have not even been introduced to each other.

This appears to be an astonishing story of incompetence. My hon. Friend and I are members of the Estimates Committee. May I ask whether he has inquired when the Business Names Registry was last investigated by the Estimates Committee? Presumably it is spending public money. I wonder what value we are getting for that money if it cannot do a simple thing like telling people whether someone is already registered.

My hon. Friend will know that the Estimates Committee is allocated subjects each Session and that its investigations take some time. Some of us are involved in very difficult investigations at the moment. Possibly the matter can be investigated at some time.

There appears to be no contact between the two registries. I believe that there should be contact and discussion between them. Any move along these lines can only be constructive and helpful in avoiding unnecessary expense and frustration to people who deserve encouragement. The whole set-up needs further consideration. To be fair to my hon. Friend, I realise that she cannot bind or commit the Minister. However, I hope that she will undertake to draw his attention to the need to modernise what is clearly an out-of-date and frustrating system.

My constituent has been extremely patient in this situation. Some people would have made far more provocative approaches. Although he realises that the situation is pretty hopeless concerning recompense to him, there is a principle involved. I therefore urge my hon. Friend at least to say that she will bring the matter to the attention of the Minister. Perhaps something more satisfactory can be achieved for the sake of those who are trying to set up in business for themselves and at the same time, let us face it, help the nation in its economic recovery.

I begin by thanking my hon. Friend for the courteous way that he has moved the Adjournment of the House on this interesting subject. I am also grateful to him for raising this matter as it gives me the opportunity to explain what the two registrars—the Registrar of Companies and the Registrar of Business Names—can and cannot be expected to do in regard to similar names.

I will set out a little of the history of this matter. In February, 1968, Keytronics was registered as the business name of a business to be carried on from a London address and described as "mail order, electronic components". The proprietor of that business name is not associated in any way with my hon. Friend's constituent, Mr. E. S. Payne.

A year later, in February, 1969, Mr. Payne wrote to the Registrar of Business Names to say that he was about to go into the business of manufacturing electrical components and had it in mind to use the name Keytronics. He asked to be informed how he should set about registering a business name. The registrar replied that the name Keytronics was acceptable for registration, and he enclosed with his letter an application form.

In the event Mr. Payne did not apply to register a business name, but instead formed a company which, on 9th May, was registered by the name Keytronics Ltd. Solicitors and agents, acting on Mr. Payne's behalf, made the normal inquiries before registration to ascertain from the Registrar of Companies that the name Keytronics Ltd. was available for the company which Mr. Payne wished to form.

Soon after Mr. Payne's company was registered solicitors acting for the proprietor of the business name Keytronics wrote to Mr. Payne to suggest that the activities of Mr. Payne's company might harm their client's business.

Mr. Payne evidently came to the conclusion that there was ground for this suggestion as, at the company's request, the name of his company was changed from Keytronics Ltd. to E. S. Payne & Son (Norwich) Ltd. on 24th July, 1969. In a letter to me, my hon. Friend said as he has said today, that it had cost the company £300 to change its name.

My hon. Friend has said that the company would not have been put to this expense if the Registrar of Companies had informed himself of the registration in 1968 of Keytronics as a business name and had regarded that registration as a reason for not accepting Keytronics Ltd. as the name of Mr. Payne's company. Alternatively, my hon. Friend has said that Mr. Payne would not have proposed Keytronics Ltd. as the name of his company if, when Mr. Payne had inquired about registering a business name, the Registrar of Business Names had informed him that the name Keytronics was already a registered business name and was not available for registration as the name of the business Mr. Payne intended to set up.

A great deal of the loss was due to the fact that he had to cease trading and that there was legal expense involved.

I understand the difficulties that Mr. Payne has faced, and I am sorry that this has come about.

The Registrar of Companies has a duty to refuse to register a company by a name which in the opinion of the Board of Trade is undesirable, and one of the most common reasons for regarding a name proposed for a company as undesirable is that it is too like the name of an existing company. But a name proposed for a company is not regarded as undesirable solely because it is too like, or even identical with, a registered business name. The Registrar of Companies does not search the register of business names before deciding whether to accept a proposed name for a company, and he acted in accordance with established practice when he informed Mr. Payne's solicitor and agents that the name Keytronics Ltd. was available, and when in due course he registered Mr. Payne's company by that name.

My hon. Friend's other contention is that the Registrar of Business Names, when replying to Mr. Payne's inquiry, should have informed him that the name Keytronics was already registered and for that reason was not acceptable as the name of Mr. Payne's business. The Registrar of Business Names has power to refuse to register a name which in his opinion is undesirable. But, unless a name is very well known, he does not regard it as undesirable solely because it is similar to, or identical with, a name already on his register. He does not search his register when considering whether a name is acceptable for registration, and he acted in accordance with established practice when he informed Mr. Payne that the name Keytronics was available.

I will now explain why the practices of the two registrars are those that I have just described. The main concern of each registrar when exercising his power to refuse to register a name is the protection of the public. He is concerned to ensure that the public is not misled in a way which might harm it by names which are falsely indicative of, for example, Royal patronage or a connection with some official body, or of the company's or firm's standing or business.

The Registrar of Companies is also concerned to ensure that the public is not misled by confusing one company with another, and to the extent that he is successful he also incidentally protects a company's vested interest in its name. There is, I appreciate, a case for holding that the registrars should do more and try to ensure that the public is not misled by confusing a company with a trader trading under a business name similar to the name of the company, or by confusing two traders trading under similar business names. But, as most business names are registered by small concerns, the case is not a strong one.

The customers of a small grocer trading under a business name are unlikely to come to harm, even if a company running a chain of shops were to be registered by a similar name, and it is even more unlikely that it would be harmed by the proprietor of another shop being permitted to register a similar business name. However, the conclusive argument for not requiring more of the registrars is a practical one which arises from the very large number of names on the two registers. The Jenkins Committee on Company Law, from which my hon. Friend has quoted today, said in its report:

"We have been sufficiently impressed by the difficulties facing the Registrar of Companies—with a register of 400,000 companies—in preventing the use of too similar company names to be convinced that it would be impracticable to prevent similarities in the register of 800,000 business names, and still more impracticable in any combined register of over one million company and business names such as some witnesses have proposed. We therefore do not think that the Registrar of Business Names can reasonably be expected to do more than he does at present with regard to similar names."

The committee's reference to a combined register shows that it might have added that it did not think the Registrar of Companies could reasonably be expected to do more than he does at present.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend that, with the advance of electronics in general, a great deal of highly expensive equipment might conceivably deal more efficiently with this problem, and I am sure that the Companies Department of the Board of Trade would welcome a vast amount of expenditure being injected into its day-to-day work. Whether this would be justified by practical results is open to a certain amount of discussion.

This problem was looked at by the Jenkins Committee, an independent committee which took a great deal of evidence and examined the existing practices of the Companies Department of the Board of Trade. Although I am quite happy to pass on to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade the views expressed this afternoon by my hon. Friend, I do not believe that a case of sufficient strength has so far been made to justify any alteration in existing practices.

I recognise the practical difficulties to which my hon. Friend has referred, but if they are so conclusive why does the Registrar of Business Names keep a list at all? Why does he not confine himself to saying whether names are desirable or undesirable? What is the point of keeping a list if it is never to be used for purposes of com- parison? We are spending either too much or too little.

I should like to go a little further. The Inland Revenue is stocking up with computers which will be available in Government Departments for use. This would be a simple solution.

I am grateful to my hon. Friends for their suggestions, which will always be examined with great care by my right hon. Friend. I cannot, however, do other than find a certain amount of wry amusement in two important responsible members of the Estimates Committee so gaily committing my Department to what would be a very large expense for what could not, perhaps—I put it no higher—be justified by the benefit that would be felt by the taxpayer and those who use the facilities offered at Companies House.

If there is any comfort that I can offer my hon. Friends this afternoon, it is that I will certainly study the points which they have made and pass them on carefully to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.